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Does this kind of harrassment-marketing really work? Until someone creates a payer based email system, yes this will work because the cost of spam is almost 0.

Does this kind of harrassment-marketing really work? Until someone creates a payer based email system, yes this will work because the cost of spam is almost 0. Now imagine a system where you get paid a penny (or dime?) for every email sent to you by someone not on your contact list, with the only caveat that the other person has to opt in to the same system. Could this take off and be the gmail killer? (Perhaps you could even allow email from approved non-members)

TeMPOraL 13y ago
Unfortunately, no. Obligatory reading: http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt
- dllthomas 13y ago
  The below assumes the worst case, some of these will be mutually exclusive (hit by different potential implementations). Your post advocates a (0) technical approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.) (1) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected (2) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money (3) Users of email will not put up with it (4) Microsoft will not put up with it (5) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once (6) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers Specifically, your plan fails to account for (7) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money (8) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email (9) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes (10) Extreme profitability of spam (11) Outlook and the following philosophical objections may also apply: (12) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical (13) Whitelists suck (14) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud (15) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually (16) Sending email should be free That said, a lot of these can clearly be designed around. I think 12 is the most significant point, though everything fails to work until it works. Everyone should feel free to dig into particular points below. It may well be intractable, but snarky posts from before bitcoin don't demonstrate that.
hengheng 13y ago
Facebook is charging 0,70$ to deliver messages you send to random people /into their inbox/ instead of the 'other' folder. Which to me seems brilliant.
- deletes 13y ago
  What if they send them from gmail or somewhere else?
deletes 13y ago
I would imagine a system with a whitelist. Anyone not on the whitelist, gets an automatic reply and his email is not even processed. The reply email has a captcha, once you solve it you can send the email that will be processed and read. The receiver can decide whether to put you on a whitelist or not. So a friendly message will require at most a single captcha, and from then on work normally. Those emails that get trough, have shown enough effort for you to read, and if it is spam, you put it on an always-block-blacklist. The captcha or something equivalent has to be only hard enough so the spammers time isn't worth it. Of course email replies to you would always get trough.

TeMPOraL 13y ago

Unfortunately, no. Obligatory reading: http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt

dllthomas 13y ago
The below assumes the worst case, some of these will be mutually exclusive (hit by different potential implementations). Your post advocates a (0) technical approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.) (1) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected (2) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money (3) Users of email will not put up with it (4) Microsoft will not put up with it (5) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once (6) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers Specifically, your plan fails to account for (7) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money (8) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email (9) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes (10) Extreme profitability of spam (11) Outlook and the following philosophical objections may also apply: (12) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical (13) Whitelists suck (14) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud (15) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually (16) Sending email should be free That said, a lot of these can clearly be designed around. I think 12 is the most significant point, though everything fails to work until it works. Everyone should feel free to dig into particular points below. It may well be intractable, but snarky posts from before bitcoin don't demonstrate that.

hengheng 13y ago

Facebook is charging 0,70$ to deliver messages you send to random people /into their inbox/ instead of the 'other' folder. Which to me seems brilliant.

deletes 13y ago
What if they send them from gmail or somewhere else?

deletes 13y ago

I would imagine a system with a whitelist. Anyone not on the whitelist, gets an automatic reply and his email is not even processed. The reply email has a captcha, once you solve it you can send the email that will be processed and read. The receiver can decide whether to put you on a whitelist or not. So a friendly message will require at most a single captcha, and from then on work normally. Those emails that get trough, have shown enough effort for you to read, and if it is spam, you put it on an always-block-blacklist. The captcha or something equivalent has to be only hard enough so the spammers time isn't worth it. Of course email replies to you would always get trough.